Page 94 of Madam, May I

“Melissa Colbert,” the petite woman said, extending her hand.

Desdemona Dean.

“Alisha Smith,” she said, sliding her hand into hers. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’ve been seeing you in the elevator and going in and out of your apartment, but I decided to work up the nerve to finally introduce myself,” she said, taking a comical little bow as if proud of her accomplishment.

Desdemona chuckled. “Are you new to New York?” she asked, forcing herself out of her comfort zone of not mingling with her neighbors unless necessary—and so far, to date, it hadn’t been.

She splayed her fingers and motioned her hand back and forth a bit. “It’s been three years since I moved from Boston, but I’m brand-new to trendy Tribeca,” she said. “I’m in advertising.”

Oh? Me? I’m in the procurement of sexual pleasure. Isn’t that interesting?

“You’ll love Tribeca,” she said, pushing aside her unease at the line of questions that normally followed after a first-time meeting. Husband? Kids? Career?

Desdemona looked past her neighbor to her door being nudged open by a nose. Moments later a small French bulldog with a beautiful fawn coat sat in the doorway with its tongue wagging and an adorable pink collar with a bow around its neck.

Melissa looked over her shoulder and then smiled. “That’s Frenchie. I won her in my divorce earlier this year,” she said, turning and bending. With a soft clap of her hands, the dog came trotting forward.

“Adorable,” Desdemona admitted, looking down as the woman stroked her.

“Are you afraid?” Melissa asked, looking back at her. “I didn’t think to ask.”

“No, I’m not.”

Melissa picked the dog up into her arms. “She’s ready for her walk,” she said. “Listen, maybe we can do dinner. Let me know. My mother thinks the divorce broke me and I need a friend. She’s mistaken about the divorce, but maybe she’s right about the friend.”

“We’ll see,” Desdemona said, shying away.

There was a shift in Melissa’s eyes—a wariness—even as she smiled. “Let me know,” she said with a shrug before turning to cross the hall and enter her apartment.

Desdemona turned to her own door, finally undoing the lock with her key before entering. She paused and stared at the door across the hall. She felt so weird having never had a friend. Not in school, where she struggled to find herself without her father, and not during her streetwalking days, when she grappled with the truth of the change in her life. The control levied upon her by her fear. And not as a high-powered madam, constantly juggling balls and finding friendship the one thing she could afford to never pick up.

Closing the door behind herself, she locked it before she set her bag and keys on the table in the foyer and kicked off her flats. Removing the pin that secured her topknot, she ran her nails over her scalp and shook out her hair as she turned on the lights as she made her way through the apartment. She drew a bath, lit candles, and used the remote to turn on the television in the mirror over the double sink that she hardly ever used.

She undressed and stepped into the tub, enjoying the feel of the heated water as she lowered her body beneath the depths until her chin dapped the surface and sent rings out in the water. She looked around at the beauty with the sound of the Eyewitness News in the background. “Lonely isnotthe business,” she said, arching a brow when her words seemed to echo.

“The search continues for a missing thirteen-year-old girl in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Local police are asking for any information regarding the disappearance of Ayanna Lewis, who never made it home yesterday evening after school.”

Desdemona turned her head to eye the cute black girl with sideways cornrows the younger girls called “Lemonade braids” after Beyoncé sported them in the video of the same name.

“She is five foot, three inches tall and weighs one hundred pounds. She was last seen wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and black sneakers with a black hoodie. Anyone with information on Ayanna should call the police.”

Desdemona prayed the little girl was somewhere safe and not in the clutches of a man looking to trade her innocence for money. “Be safe. Be smart. Be vigilant. Get home, Ayanna,” she said aloud in prayer. Sex trafficking was an all too real epidemic in America, and she knew that firsthand.

“One begets the other.”

“Get out of my head, Loren,” she drawled.

She didn’t linger as she normally did and finished her bath, pulling on a red robe of soft lace that stroked the floor as she moved. “I need work. Work is good,” she said, sitting on the couch and picking up her laptop. “Work is distracting.”

But it didn’t work.

Plum was in rehab. And fired.

Red was living her temporary dreams on the Upper East Side. And quit.

Tasty was steps away from being a lawyer. And resigned.

---